Prior to the background of the invention being set forth, it may be helpful to set forth definitions of certain terms that will be used hereinafter.
The term “object” as used herein is defined as an entity in a photo, or set of photos, that corresponds to a real object in the world, e.g. a person, pet or even a general thing such as a car. Therefore, a single person that is recognized in multiple photos will be considered as a single object, having several instances.
The term “smart camera” as used herein is defined as a user equipment (e.g., smartphone, tablet PC, laptop) that is equipped with image capturing capabilities and is further equipped with hardware or software enabling it to make automatic decisions in real-time based on analysis of the input footage and the camera sensors.
The term “saliency” as used herein is defined as the state or quality by which an object (such as a person) stands out relative to its neighbors in a scene captured by a camera. In psychology, saliency detection is considered to be a key attentional mechanism that facilitates learning and survival by enabling organisms to focus their limited perceptual and cognitive resources on the most pertinent subset of the available sensory data. Saliency typically arises from contrasts between objects and their neighborhood.
Machine assisted image capturing is well known in the art of photography. Many cameras and image capturing applications running on smartphones tend to employ some form of semi-automatic capturing in which the user make the most important decision of the timing of the capturing and the point of view of the capturing and the camera does the rest: exposure time, lighting conditions, resolution, and the like.
It would be advantageous to use the computing power of the camera (e.g., of a smartphone) to also assist in making the decision of the capturing time and camera settings.